Spoken word album

Spoken word albums have been made since the early days of recording; examples include the popular Ronald Colman 1941 version of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol on American Decca Records. However, a true milestone was reached when Columbia Masterworks, which had previously released an album of excerpts from Shakespeare's Richard II with Maurice Evans, made a complete recording of Margaret Webster's famed (and never filmed) 1943 Broadway production of Othello, starring Paul Robeson, José Ferrer, and Uta Hagen, on an 18-record 78-RPM set running a total of two hours and eight minutes. It was later transferred to LP.^[2] It was the longest spoken word album made up to that time.^{[citation needed]} The album gave millions of listeners who otherwise were unable to attend a theatrical performance a chance to hear Robeson as Othello and Ferrer as Iago.

After the advent of LPs, spoken word albums became much more common.

• The above-mentioned Ronald Colman A Christmas Carol was transferred to LP, as were many other 78-RPM spoken word albums made by American Decca, such as Moby Dick, with Charles Laughton as Captain Ahab; an uncredited actor provided the voice of Ishmael, the narrator.
• Disneyland Records issued many spoken word albums for children, including narrated adaptations of the Disney films in their "Disneyland Storyteller" series.
• Notable Broadway productions, such as Don Juan in Hell (1950, with Charles Boyer, Charles Laughton, Cedric Hardwicke and Agnes Moorehead), the 1953 dramatized reading of the poem John Brown's Body (with Tyrone Power, Judith Anderson, and Raymond Massey), the original 1962 Broadway version of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (with Uta Hagen, Arthur Hill, George Grizzard and Melinda Dillon), and Richard Burton's Broadway production of Hamlet (1964), were all recorded complete with their original casts by Columbia Masterworks.
• José Ferrer was heard in an album of excerpts from Cyrano de Bergerac, with members of the cast of the 1946 Broadway revival in which Ferrer first played Cyrano, on Capitol Records.^[3]
• Caedmon Records recorded the complete plays of Shakespeare as well as recordings of other plays, such as Death of a Salesman with original stars Lee J. Cobb and Mildred Dunnock, The Glass Menagerie with Jessica Tandy,^[4] and a nearly complete Cyrano de Bergerac with Ralph Richardson, who had triumphed in the role in London in 1946.^[5] Many of these recorded dramas were played in high school literature classes to enable students to hear the play and follow along in their textbooks at the same time.^{[citation needed]}
• After the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963, memorial collections of his speeches began to appear on LP.^{[citation needed]} Most of the soundtrack of the commemorative documentary John F. Kennedy: Years of Lightning, Day of Drums (1966), narrated by Gregory Peck, was released on a Capitol Records LP.
• Dialogue excerpts were also released of the film soundtracks of Franco Zeffirelli's The Taming of the Shrew (1967) (on RCA Victor),^[6] and Romeo and Juliet (1968)^[7] (on Capitol). RCA Victor also released a virtually complete 2-LP album of the film soundtrack of A Man for All Seasons (1966). RCA Victor was also responsible for complete 4-LP album sets of Laurence Olivier as Othello ^[8] and Zeffirelli's National Theatre of Great Britain production of Much Ado About Nothing, starring Maggie Smith, Robert Stephens, and Albert Finney.^[9]
• Emlyn Williams recorded an edition of his one-man performance as Charles Dickens (for Argo Records).
• Hal Holbrook recorded excerpts from his one-man Mark Twain Tonight! for Columbia Masterworks.
• Having Fun with Elvis on Stage (1974), a spoken word album consisting only of banter by the singer during concerts, was created as a ploy by his manager, Colonel Tom Parker, so he could self-release an Elvis Presley album that his label RCA Records would not own the rights to.^[10]